Read Online While You Were Writing: Watkin's Pond, Book 2 by Virginia Nelson - Free Book Online

you’re neither academically connected nor saturated in the genre.”
    She snorted as he pulled her to her feet, still invading her space and seemingly unaware he did it. “Well, flattery will get you everywhere, McQueen.”
    “You know what I meant.” He waved off her complaint as inconsequential and squeezed her fingertips. “Did they engage you? What was your favorite scene? Least favorite? Who did you like better—Mina, Allisa or Demona?”
    “Baxter,” she answered without hesitation and decided to remind him he touched her in a very overt way. Flipping her wrists in his grip, she stroked his hands as she pulled her hands away, keeping eye contact as she placed one palm on his chest. He stiffened, sucking in a breath. Good, apparently he now was aware of her as a woman and not just someone to bounce questions off. “He had real heart.” She tapped his chest once, right over his heart. “He managed to stay loyal, strong, even when everything was against him doing so.” She watched Radcliffe swallow and he backed up, moving fast. She sped to keep up. “I answered a few of your questions, you owe me an answer, McQueen.”
    He froze, seeming to realize he’d been giving up ground. “We made no such agreement today.”
    “Ah, so you’re welching? I thought it was a question for an answer? Status quo. And this time, you woke me up. So my turn?” She left it dangling like a question and didn’t force him to edge away again, even if the power of doing so was going to her head.
    He smelled like man, like soap, and she licked her lips, imagining backing him up farther and going on tiptoes to touch her lips to his. Would he scramble away from her like a roach hit with a light or would he answer her silent question?
    “Fine.” He bit the word out, still frozen, hands loose at his sides. “I’ll only give you one, however, since you didn’t negotiate prior to the initiation of the conversation.”
    “What happened to your wife?”
    His eyebrow—he still hadn’t manscaped it into two, shower or not—dropped low over his cobalt gaze and the lines around his mouth deepened in tension. “Someone has done more than read in the past couple of days.”
    She smiled. He hadn’t answered her question and he wasn’t the only one who could wait.
    With a gusty sigh, he shoved his hand through his dark curling hair. “Divorce. Trite, but divorce.”
    “Why?”
    She fired the question off even if he hadn’t promised her a second answer. Depending on how sensitive a nerve she’d plucked, she braced for any reaction.
    His slow curling smile, like a Cheshire grin, wasn’t one she’d expected. “What are you willing to trade for your answer, Sheri?”
    With painful slowness that sent her heart stuttering in her chest and squeezed the breath from her lungs, he captured his lower lip between his teeth and considered her with an absolutely feral gaze. Her pulse thrummed to life—double time, even—and heat flooded her face as the sexual promise in that look raced across her flesh like a touch.
    “If you’re trying to distract me again, Radcliffe…”
    He tilted his head at her, almost like she amused him, but the sexual tension didn’t ease. She became aware—as her nerves sizzled to life and begged her to push into uncharted territory—that she stood alone with a man. A large, powerful and intriguing man. Two consenting adults could do quite interesting things with an entire house of solitude.
    “Are you distracted? I’m not doing anything, simply asking you how far you’re willing to go for answers.” The innocence he played with wasn’t in his tone, even if the words suggested an innocuous conversation. The overtones were so thick in his body language, her fingertips itched to touch him and see how far he’d go with his ploy.
    She could retreat or attack.
    Raising her chin, she stepped closer, within an arm’s span of him. “I can only help you if you let me. If you’re assuming you can scare me off